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uwmarchives · 14 days
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Society of Women Engineers!
As part of Women’s History Month, we are celebrating women in the engineering field by showing out Society of Women Engineers collection with some pictures, brochures, and stickers from the 1970s and 80s. 
The Society of Women Engineers is a non-profit, educational, service organization dedicated to making known the need for women engineers and encouraging young women to consider an engineering education. The specific objectives of the society are to inform young women, their parents, counselors, and the general public of the qualifications and achievements of women engineers and the opportunities open to them; to assist women engineers in readying themselves for a return to active work after temporary retirement; to encourage women engineers to attain high levels of educational and professional achievement; and to serve as a center of information on women in engineering. The charter of the Milwaukee Chapter was approved in 1973.
-Society of Women Engineers, Milwaukee Chapter Records: UWM Manuscript Collection 168, Boxes 1 and 2. 
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uwmarchives · 15 days
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A Friendly Wager on Votes for Women (c. 1876-1896)
“A true account of two important documents and what came of them.”
Perhaps the student was fumbling about for a pencil when she discovered a letter tucked at the back of a desk drawer in Suite 18 of Ladies’ Hall. Whatever the circumstances, the letter proved to be a happy discovery for the student (a member of the Class of 1896) and her companions in Ladies’ Hall (eventually known as Chadbourne Hall, shown below).
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Twenty years earlier, two residents of the very same suite had sealed the terms of a bet on this sheet of paper. The matter under dispute? Women’s suffrage. If women had obtained the vote before 1896, Miss Helen Remington would treat residents of Suites 18 and 19 to dinner. If women were “still in bondage” by the same year, Miss Juliet Meyer would fund the feast.
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With great relish, the inhabitants of Suites 18 and 19 wrote to Miss Juliet Meyer (now Mrs. Juliet Brown) to inform her of her loss. On February 22, 1896, Brown hosted the bet’s beneficiaries at the Hotel Van Etta (118-124 King Street). The ladies dined on oysters, quail, and raspberry sherbet – a sumptuous feast for these self-declared “hungry girls” who were tired of eating “codfish and hash.”
In the intervening years, Miss Helen Remington (now Mrs. J. M. Olin, shown below), Brown’s vindicated opponent, had become an active defender of women’s rights, participating in the organization that eventually became known as the Wisconsin Women’s Suffrage Association. At her side stood husband and UW-Madison law professor John M. Olin, a major public figure in Madison as both a University Regent and President of the Wisconsin Bar Association.
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To the chagrin of Helen Remington Olin and many present at the Hotel Van Etta, women would not win the vote until June 10, 1919. Nonetheless, “most bounteous and enjoyable feast” brought together two generations of women for whom the very act of pursuing higher education was a considerable feat to be celebrated.
Story found in the 1900 Badger Yearbook, pages 209 and 210.
For more information about UW-Madison campus history, contact [email protected] or visit http://archives.library.wisc.edu.
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uwmarchives · 16 days
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Here’s an 1855 diploma from Milwaukee Female College, a predecessor of Milwaukee-Downer College!  The ink is pretty faded, but you can still make out that it was signed by Increase Lapham, eminent Wisconsin scientist.
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uwmarchives · 17 days
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Greetings from Lake Park, Milwaukee!
Wishing you could take a summer stroll around Lake Park today? Us too.
In light of all this unexpected winter weather, all we can do is remember how beautiful Milwaukee summers are. We are so close!
Greetings from Milwaukee Digital Postcard Collection:
1. Grand stairway
2. Government Light House
3. Lake Park
4. Lion Bridge
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uwmarchives · 20 days
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Business and Professional Women’s Club of Milwaukee
Happy Women’s History Month! Today we are showcasing our collection from the Business and Professional Women’s Club of Milwaukee. These images are some brochures, organizational documents and a photograph from their 1924 Convention in Wausau, Wisconsin.
The Business Women’s Club of Milwaukee was created in April 1920 with 100 charter members. Affiliated with the National Federation of Women’s Clubs, Inc., which was founded in 1919, the Milwaukee group allied with the Eastern District of the Wisconsin Federation in 1921. In 1925, the organizations added the word “professional” to their name. Membership is open to any working woman, and represents a wide variety of professions. Following the same goals as those of their parent organization, the Business and Professional Women’s Club of Milwaukee strives to enrich its members’ private and professional lives through education, legislation and community activities. Educational efforts have consisted of lectures and seminars geared for working women, as well as scholarship programs for female college students. In legislative matters, the Milwaukee branch was active in pressing for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment as well as lobbying for the removal of discriminatory practices in the insurance industry. The group has secured representation on various national, state and local advisory and advocacy groups which seek to better the lives of working women. The Business and Professional Women’s Club of Milwaukee also has been active in the community affairs of the Milwaukee area as evidenced by its work in helping to establish the Milwaukee War Memorial Center, and by its financial and service contributions to various charitable and non-profit organizations. 
Business and Professional Women’s Club of Milwaukee Records: UWM Manuscript Collection 127, Boxes 2-4
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uwmarchives · 21 days
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Specializing in single-family residences, the firm of Willis and Lillian Leenhouts Architects was well-known for its regional modernist style and utilization of passive solar technologies. The collection includes project records of the        firm (both files and drawings), as well as Willis and Lillian Leenhouts’ professional papers. The project records are the most extensive portion of the collection and pertain to over 500 built and unbuilt projects from 1936 to 1990. Of the projects represented in this collection, the vast majority are single- or multi-family residences in the Milwaukee area.
Since it’s Women’s History Month, we’d be remiss not to mention that Lillian Leenhouts’ career was especially distinguished. From 1929 to 1932, she studied at the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee, where she discovered the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. She graduated from the University of Michigan School of Architecture in 1936, returning to Milwaukee and working in the architectural office of Harry Bogner, president of the Milwaukee Art Institute. Lillian had the distinction of becoming Wisconsin’s first licensed female architect in 1942, and she helped to form the Milwaukee chapter of the Society of Women Engineers in 1973. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning awarded her an honorary doctorate in May 1989. In 1990, the School established a financial scholarship in Willis and Lillian Leenhouts’ name. Willis and Lillian were inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects (A.I.A.) in 1975, marking the first time in the A.I.A.’s history that a husband and wife earned a fellowship together.
Our Leenhouts records are getting a workout this semester for an architecture class and we’re always curious to see which designs students choose for their projects. This 1952 design for the First Methodist Church of South Milwaukee is one of their non-residential projects.  We’re especially fond of the mid-century aesthetic and the woman with the perky pillbox hat.
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uwmarchives · 22 days
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In honor of Women’s History Month,  we will be featuring a series of remarkable women in our collections.  This Wednesday, we’re highlighting Charlotte Russell Partridge and Miriam Frink.
Partridge came to Milwaukee-Downer college as a faculty member in the Fine Arts department in 1914. She met Frink, who taught English at college, that same year. They became lifelong companions, sharing their lives and a home for fifty-five years. 
Patridge and Frink are most known for founding Milwaukee’s Layton School of Art in 1920, which started with day and night classes for adults and Saturday classes for children. At Layton, Frink taught literature appreciation while overseeing business and student activities, while Partridge taught art classes, and oversaw the faculty and community activities. They remained with the school until 1954 when a Board of Trustees meeting decided to forcibly “retire” the women, carried out immediately, despite protests from faculty, students, and alumni. 
In addition to her work at the Layton School of Art, Partridge also served as the director of the Layton Art Gallery from 1922-1953, served on the gallery’s Board of Trustees from 1921 to 1973, and directed the Wisconsin Federal Art Project from 1935 to 1939 among other civic projects. 
Charlotte Partridge once said of Miriam Frink, “Miss Frink is the head and I am the feet of the school.” Margaret Clark Davis stated, “Charlotte was marvelous and Miriam was tremendous along with her… Miriam was like a Great Dane–[she] protected, undergirded, and saw to it that things worked out for Charlotte.” The two women’s individual talents complemented each other and the two, together, made the Layton School of Art unique.
For further exploration: the Smithsonian Archives of American Art has a fascinating oral history interview with Partridge.
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uwmarchives · 23 days
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In honor of Women’s History Month, we will be featuring a series of remarkable women in our collections. This Wednesday, we’re highlighting Helen Willa Samuels.
A graduate of Queens College (1964) and Simmons College (1965), Samuels has had an illustrious career spanning five decades. She began as a music librarian, but turned to archives when she was hired in 1972 by the University of Cincinnati to run the brand new archival program. In 1977, Samuels became the first archivist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she spent the majority of her career before retiring in 2006.
Samuels is known for developing two important concepts in archival appraisal: institutional functional analysis, and documentation strategy, both of which took the archival world by storm. Archivists have long realized that choosing which records to keep is often conducted in a piecemeal fashion and not based on a holistic understanding of the documents’ creation and context. 
In his introductory essay to Controlling the Past: Documenting Society and Institutions, a festschrift in Samuels’ honor, Terry Cook reflects that “the important message…from Helen was that appraisal was a societal activity and had a societal focus, much more than it was about reflecting or anticipating research trends in history or documenting the key activities of one’s parent or sponsoring institution.”
Her ideas, along with those of her peers, helped the archival community to think about the role of the archivist as somebody who is not a passive guardian of historical treasures, but a group of individuals who are ultimately documenting society. To do this effectively, Samuels argued that archivists need to understand both the context and process of records creation; by studying these processes and creating institutions, archivists can develop a strategy of appraisal to cover as much of the documentary universe as possible.
The photograph above was taken on October 3, 1985 during Samuels’ visit to the School of Librarianship, University of New South Wales. Dr. Peter Orlovich is in the foreground. From right to left, pictured are John Shipp, Laurie Dillon, Denis Rowe, Samuels, and Ken Smith.
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uwmarchives · 24 days
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The Milwaukee Does
Women’s professional basketball was born in Milwaukee in 1978 when the Milwaukee Does hosted the Chicago Hustle in the inaugural game of the Women’s Professional Basketball League (WBL). Playing their home games at the downtown MECCA (now the UWM Panther Arena), the Does lasted two seasons in the WBL, posting records of 11-23 and 11-24. While the Does did inspire a loyal base of fans, it was too small to sustain the team. Suffering from financial problems and low attendance, the team folded in 1980 and a planned replacement club, to be known as the Milwaukee Express, failed to materialize.
The above photos catch the Does in action in Milwaukee and are part of the collection, Milwaukee Does Scrapbooks, 1978-1980 (UWM MSS 178). In addition to over 200 photos, the collection contains tickets, game programs, newspaper clippings, and copies of the Does fan newsletter.
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uwmarchives · 27 days
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It’s Women’s History Month! Here at the UWM Archives, we have a special place in our heart for the courageous Golda Meir.  
Golda was born in Russia in 1898, but immigrated to the US with her family and settled in Milwaukee in 1906.  She attended the Fourth Street Grade School (she’s pictured above sitting at her old school desk) and attended the Wisconsin State Normal School in 1916 (now the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee!). 
Golda and her husband Morris were married in 1917 and soon moved to Palestine where she became more involved in the Zionist movement.  At the end of World War II, she took part in the negotiations with the British that resulted in the creation of the state of Israel and in 1948 she was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.   
Golda became Prime Minister of Israel in 1969 and left office in 1974, dying shortly thereafter in 1978.  
Our library at UWM is named after Golda Meir and we hold a small collection of photographs and papers pertaining to Meir’s political life.  The photographs are digitized in a collection titled Picturing Golda Meir.    
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uwmarchives · 28 days
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Celebrating the life of LLoyd Barbee
On this last day of Black History Month, we are celebrating Lloyd Barbee, an attorney, a state legislator, and one of the most prominent leaders of Wisconsin’s civil rights movement. These images are from his various campaigns for the Wisconsin State Assembly, dates ranging from 1964-1972.
He was elected president of the Madison branch of the NAACP in 1955. In 1958, he completed a study outlining discriminatory housing practices in Madison, and conducted his first civil rights demonstration in support of open housing in 1961 at the Wisconsin State Capitol. That same year, Barbee was elected president of the Wisconsin NAACP. At the urging of national NAACP leaders, Barbee moved to Milwaukee in 1962 to confront the de facto segregation of the city’s public schools.
In 1964 Barbee organized and led an alliance of civil rights activists dedicated to ending de facto segregation in Milwaukee called the Milwaukee United School Integration Committee (MUSIC). On June 17, 1965, Barbee filed a federal lawsuit, Amos et al. v. Board of School Directors of the City of Milwaukee, charging the Milwaukee School Board with unconstitutionally maintaining racial segregation in its schools. Barbee won the case in 1976, but spent the next several years dealing with appeals, new trials, and work to enact a viable plan to desegregate the school system. In 1964 Barbee was also elected to the Wisconsin State Assembly where he served until 1977. - March on Milwaukee Digital Collection
Images from the Lloyd A. Barbee Papers, Milwaukee Mss 16, Box 5, Folder 1.
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uwmarchives · 29 days
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“I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong” ~Muhammad Ali (1966)
Muhammad Ali, aka Cassius Clay or (apparently the “Pasha of Pugilism”), famously refused his induction into the US Military as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. As a practicing Muslim, Ali cited his beliefs as the reason for his rejection of the draft. At this time, Ali and his resistance of the draft, outspokenness about racism, and early adherence to the teachings of the Nation of Islam also solidified the boxer as a symbol of Black Pride during the Civil Rights era. In 1971, in the case Clay v. United States, 403 U.S. 698, the US Supreme Court overturned a ruling in a lower court which denied Ali his application for conscientious objector status in an unanimous decision. Ali later left the Nation of Islam and converted to Sunni Islam.
This cartoon drawn by Albert Rainovic offers a unique look at the political side of sports in American Society. However, Rainovic doesn’t lose sight of  the 1967 Ali vs Terrell WBA Heavyweight Division Match.
In the end, Ali won his bout against Ernie Terrell and Uncle Sam. Find more fascinating sports cartoons in the Albert Rainovic Collection.
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uwmarchives · 1 month
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Not all civil rights battles were fought by adults; 1968 saw Milwaukee junior high and high school students making their voices heard and demanding changes in their schools. They called for textbooks that acknowledged the contributions and lives of African American people, as well as representation of African-Americans in the school system.
This WTMJ clip from our March on Milwaukee collection features three high school students. The first student, an unidentified senior from Riverside High School, expresses his frustration that the school has threatened a mass suspension if the students continue to protest textbooks. The students are tired of waiting for new textbooks, and he is concerned that more suspensions might lead to violence. The second student is none other than future Representative Gwen Moore, then Student Council President at North Division High School. Moore suggests that administrators apply more pressure for new textbooks. The final student to speak is John Lawrence, a senior from Lincoln High School. Lawrence discusses protests at his own school and his hope that education for future generations of African-American students would be better and more inclusive. Lawrence also speaks about the Milwaukee Public School’s adoption of the text  ”The Negro in America: A Guide to Supplement the Study of United States History,” and his frustration that the history of African-Americans is relegated to a supplemental history.
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uwmarchives · 1 month
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Velvalea “Vel” Phillips (1923-2018) was a Civil Rights activist and barrier-breaking attorney, judge, and politician. A Milwaukee native, Phillips became the first black woman to ever graduate from UW-Madison’s law school, doing so in 1951. In 1956, Phillips became the first woman and first African American ever elected to the Milwaukee common council. On the council, she was an active voice for Milwaukee’s black community, introducing an open housing ordinance in 1962. In 1971, she was appointed as Milwaukee County’s first female judge, also becoming the first African American judge in Wisconsin history. In 1978, she became the first African American to win a state-wide election, when she was elected secretary of state.
After she passed away in 2018, Milwaukee’s North Fourth Street was renamed Vel R. Phillips Avenue in her honor. These pieces of campaign memorabilia are part of the Vel Phillips Papers (Milwaukee MSS 231), held at the UWM Archives.
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uwmarchives · 1 month
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Echo
Echo was a magazine published in Milwaukee from 1966 to 1986. It covered a large array of subjects including state and local history, social and political updates; fashion advice and cooking tips; photography and poetry. 
Virginia W. Williams had been working with local youth in a writers’ workshop and wanted to give those developing voices a wider audience. In the Editor’s Page, of the 10 year anniversary issue, Winter 1976-77, Williams explains the beginnings of Echo.
“Echo Magazine had long been a dream of its founder and publisher, Virginia W. Williams. Necessity gave birth to the magazine. I thought of a magazine as a vehicle for publishing the young writers. Ten years ago [1966] the Black press in Milwaukee was in its infancy. The magazine’s aim was to encourage minority writers to write.”
Some of the skills that the youth participating in the writers’ workshop were taught included journalism, creative writing, basic English, remedial reading, typing, and commercial art. Many who participated in the program went on to earn degrees in mass media and work professionally at the city, state, and national levels.
“Echo has publicized ten years of measured, stable progress in this state - economically, culturally, and educationally.”
You can see several issues of Echo in the UWM Archives reading room (E185.5 .E24x)
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uwmarchives · 1 month
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FATHER GROPPI
There were a number of key figures in the fight for open housing in Milwaukee in the 1960s, one of those prominent figures is Father James Groppi of St. Boniface Church. As the leader of Milwaukee’s NAACP Youth Council Chapter, Groppi grabbed every opportunity he could to get the media’s attention regarding the injustice of African Americans in Milwaukee and the discrimination they faced when trying to rent or purchase homes outside of Milwaukee’s “inner core” neighborhood. This clip is from a press conference shortly after the open housing riots in July 1967 and comes from the UWM WTMJ-TV news collection: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-mil00203
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uwmarchives · 1 month
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Black UWM Students Helped Change Higher Education
The grassroots activism of Black University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students culminated in the establishment of the Center for Afro-American Studies in 1969, one of the first two Africology programs in the United States. In March of 1968, UWM staff proposed “Project Potential–Wisconsin #1” to address weaknesses in the educational programming for students of color. Students were displeased with the program plan, and proposed their own program titled, “Black Education for the Black Man by the Black Man.” These student would form the leadership of the United Black Student Front (UBSF) at UWM. A new draft of the program, one which incorporated student ideas, and both were presented to faculty in May of 1968. Students, however felt the meeting was unproductive, and no action was taken. A week later, the UBSF met with Chancellor Martin Klotsche and presented a list of its demands for African-American education. Klotsche’s promise to explore various options rang hollow to the group, and on May 16, the UBSF held a press conference stating that Chancellor Klotsche did not answer any of the group’s demands. 
By the first week of June, the Faculty Senate approved the formation of an Ad Hoc Committee to create a Center for Afro American Culture (CAAC) at UWM. They also voted to create a Black Student Union (BSU) by September of that year. Although this was a step forward, the UBSF continued to fight for ownership of their education and called for more student involvement in the planning process. 1968 had been a tense year following the end of 200 consecutive nights of housing marches in Milwaukee, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and the expulsion of 94 Black Student activists from UW-Oshkosh, and, unrest on campus was reaching a boiling point. The Black Student Union rejected University programming such as “Black Encounter Week” which they saw as pandering and believed it exploited of Black culture.
In January of 1969, the CAAC Ad Hoc Committee passed a motion to officially approve the center for the fall semester of 1969, at which point the committee would focus on developing the center as a degree-granting unit. Throughout the year, students pressured the University Administration to make sure the Center reflected the best interests of the Black Community on Campus. In February, 50 Black students presented Chancellor Klotsche with demands to interview James Turner, an anthropology lecturer at UWM, for head of the CAAC. After presenting their demands, the students joined another 200 students at a rally in the Union and march across campus. In March, the BSU withdrew its support of the CAAC in a special meeting with UWM faculty. Seventy-five students informed the faculty that they would no longer support any type of African-American Studies programs created by the faculty and the university.Shortly there after, A fight broke out at the Union snack bar between a group of Black students and White fraternity brothers, which prompted Campus Police to close the snack bar temporarily and City police later to close it for the rest of the day.The following day, Black Students rallied in the Snack Bar. Black students were committed to defending their place on campus and in higher education when few supported their right to do so, and, in December of 1969, The Board of Regents approved Chancellor Klotsche’s proposal for a permanent Center for Afro-American Studies.
Flier announcing a rally to support the formation of a Center for Afro-American Culture, February 21, 1969. From box 6, folder 1, UW-Milwaukee Office of the Chancellor Records United Black Student Front holds a press conference in Chapman Hall, March 1, 1969. From box 11, folder 40, UW-Milwaukee Photographs Collection Black Demands flier, March 13, 1969. From box 1, folder 17, UW-Milwaukee Dept. of Africology Records Prof. Ernest Spaights was involved in early discussions to create a Center for Afro-American Culture. From box 3, folder 17, UW-Milwaukee Photographs Collection
“Snack bar closed twice as student groups clash,” From The UWM Post, March 23, 1969, Volume 13,  number 41. African-American students rally in snack bar area of the Union, March 25, 1969. From box 11, folder 40, UW-Milwaukee Photographs Collection
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